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Pickleball - You know you’ve made it in Canada when...
  updated Monday, April 29, 2019
  posted Monday, April 29, 2019
  filed in Articles
  by Richard Lee

Pickleball - You know you’ve made it in Canada when ... a pretty long article is written about you in Canada’s National Newspaper.

The article in question, "Pickleball: The game more and more people relish", was written by Allan Maki and published on April 26, 2019 in the Globe & Mail. As it’s for subscribers only, below is my synopsis.

With its pun-ny title, it begins:

“You start with the court. It’s a badminton-size court that lulls players into thinking they can cover every speck of it, return every shot. They can’t. You look at the wooden paddles, bigger than the ones for table tennis but smaller than the paddles pizza makers use to slide their pies into the oven. Then you look at the plastic ball with holes cut into it so the air will slow it down or make it flutter like a Phil Niekro knuckleball.

Lump all this together and you have a game that is not badminton, not tennis, not table tennis, not paddle tennis. What you have is pickleball, an everything-into-the-pot activity that borrows from all those games and continues to bill itself as the fastest-growing sport in North America, and with good reason.”

So true, don’t you agree? It goes on to say that there are more than three million players in the US and 75,000 players in Canada, according to industry estimates. It says cheekily that “the game is especially popular among seniors who want something to do that’s livelier than checkers but less dangerous than cliff diving.” But hey, from some of the recent injuries I’ve seen, I think it’s just as dangerous as cliff diving! And 75,000 seem low for Canada, right?

One of the most interesting parts of the article was about how the sport we love got its name. Apparently, it’s a misconception that it was named after the founder’s cocker spaniel, Pickles. The article says that according to Joan Pritchard, whose husband was one of the game’s originators in 1965, the last boat to finish a race was tagged the pickle boat. It’s not at all clear how this relates to the sport’s name. But founders “businessmen Barney McCallum, Bill Bell and then U.S. congressman Joel Pritchard figured pickleball was too daffy a name to ignore, so they claimed it”. It was only two years later that the Pritchards got a dog and called it Pickles. The format and rules were set by the three families on Bainbridge Island, off the coast of Washington state, where they spent their summers. They then brought the game to the mainland and Pickleball, Inc. was formed (presumably by the founders, but not explicitly stated in the article).

The article goes on to reinforce what we already know: “That the game doesn’t hinge on how physically strong you are has attracted many to pickleball. At its core, it’s more of a finesse sport, where only underhand serves are allowed and it’s necessary for players to know how to unleash a soft shot that skims over the top of the net then lands like a feather before anyone can get to it.” It’s a game of touch, and one attribute that makes for a good pickleballer is patience, according to a player who was interviewed.

The author, Maki, spoke with Doug Thomson, president of Pickleball Canada for the article and quoted him quite extensively. I believe the following captures Thomson’s views and vision, as expressed in the article:

Pickleball is being endorsed by tennis players...they like the quickness of pickleball and how it can sharpen their reactions.

Pickleball Canada and Tennis Canada have talked about sharing public tennis courts.

An increasing number of participants could help position the sport for inclusion in a Commonwealth Games. Should that happen, the possibility of pickleball becoming an Olympic event won’t seem so far-flung.

But first, a shift in the player ranks “from an older generation to a younger generation” is needed.

Research is being done to explain why it is a benefit not just for older people but for younger people.

Need to lobby educators. Thinks we’ll see high schools replace badminton and tennis. For every tennis court, you can have two pickleball courts.”

Well, that’s it. Please read the article for yourself, if you can. No doubt, it’s better written than what I’ve done here.

Happy Pickleballing!!
Richard Lee

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